Gifted
by messengercat
Summary: Zack can sew, and he has a couple more tales up his sleeve concerning his other colleagues as well.


_A/N._ Written for j_mercuryuk due to an increasingly cracky conversation we had while buried under reams of white fabric, beads and buttons for her cosplay a few weeks back: The hidden talents of SOLDIER.

_Disclaimer:_ Don't own it. Never have, never will, just borrowing the characters.

**Gifted**

He knew something was amiss when he walked into the derelict church and Aerith was not in her usual place tending to the flowers. So Zack quickened his pace, glancing this way and that, quite sure that he was on time and knowing it was not like the flower girl to be late. Which could only mean that something had happened and Zack was more than capable of imagining any number of less than encouraging scenarios, each one growing more outlandish than the last.

However, his fears about a heard of stampeding chocobos led by the Midgar Zolom were even more abruptly squashed upon spying the damsel not-quite-so in distress sitting in the pews muttering at a piece of red cloth in her hands.

"Hey, everything okay?" he asked, wandering over to sit next to her.

The girl frowned, "No, it's not working."

"What isn't?"

"This!" She waved the fabric in the air. "It's just getting worse instead of better!"

Curiosity getting the better of him the SOLIDER Second Class plucked the offending item from her hands and inspected the damage. It was a jacket, one which had quite a hole in the side where the seam had split, likely caught on something and ripped. It was this hole which Aerith had apparently been trying to fix and getting nowhere fast.

"Doesn't look so bad," he replied, picking up the needle and thread from where it had been viciously jabbed into an innocent pin cushion. "Pretty easy even, really."

He hadn't realised how odd it must have looked until Aerith's voice broke through his concentration: "You can sew?"

Zack blinked, "Yeah, of course. I mean, uniforms area always suffering wear and tear so someone has to fix them." He paused before elaborating. "Angeal taught me, in fact, it was one of the first things he taught me because Genesis had just given him the largest pile of clothes to fix I've ever seen. I spent my first few proper days as a member of SOLDIER being mentored in how to darn, fix buttons and mend split seams."

It had possibly been one the strangest inductions into SOLIDER in the history of Shin-Ra and he'd taken a lot of stick for it, but ultimately it had worked in his favour.

Aerith thought about the idea for a moment, "So, can everyone in SOLDIER sew?"

"Well, obviously Genesis couldn't otherwise Angeal and me wouldn't have been stuck doing it for him," Zack laughed. "Technically though everyone's supposed to, just not everyone is any good at it, but they'll often have other talents. Take my friend Kunsel, he couldn't sew a stitch if his life depended on it but he can repair a PHS in minutes no matter the make or model."

"Really?"

"Yeah, even mine and that thing's ancient."

It was Aerith's turn to laugh, "So what was Genesis' hidden talent if he couldn't sew?"

Zack didn't even have to think about that one: "Cooking. He could cook like no other; anything and everything you can think of, Genesis would be able to cook it. Angeal said he had to put all that fire to good use somehow, and preferably somehow that didn't involve burning all his socks instead of mending them."

"It sounds like it was a lot of fun."

"Mostly I just heard about it second hand from Angeal, but I got to taste the food sometimes when Genesis would make too much for them all so I'd get some too since I was Angeal's protégé." The memory of the hot soup and fresh bread in winter was enough to make his mouth water, not as good as his mother's but far better than anything else he'd had since arriving in Midgar.

Resting her head in her hands and smiling as Zack continued to work she asked if there were any other tales he could tell of the Shin-Ra employees, amused by the suddenly very human nature of these powerful people who lived above the Plate.

Zack frowned, thinking through all the stories he'd heard and then winced as he stabbed himself with the needle. He tried to decide which ones Reno had been telling the other day might have been true and which were outright lies. Some, like the idea that Tsung would run through the halls at night in nothing but his underwear were clearly completely unfounded while others, like the Director's supposed OCD cleaning of his impeccable office, were all too easy to believe.

The thought of Director Lazard's office, however, brought to mind another office he'd only been in once, and Zack grinned, "How about the General?"

"You mean General Sephiroth?"

"Do you know of any others?"

Aerith shook her head and waited quietly for Zack to begin his next tale.

"I kind of stumbled upon this one by accident. I got lost, a lot, when I was first given free reign of access to Shin-Ra Tower, the place is a maze and there are doors everywhere, most of which lead nowhere. So, I was lost and looking everywhere for someone to ask, and I found the General's office. I guessed if anyone would know where to go it was him so I walked right on in. He wasn't home, but there were these wood carvings, mostly birds, on his desk, one of which wasn't complete, looked like it had been left in a hurry."

"What did you do?"

"I ran for it, didn't want to be caught snooping in General Sephiroth's office."

"So, you think he made those carvings?"

Zack grinned and snapped off the thread, holding up his handy work to inspect it for any faults, "I don't think; I know. See, there was one of those little wooden birds turned up in Angeal's office too and I sneaked a proper look at that one when Angeal wasn't looking; it had the General's name carved into the bottom. Don't know what it was for, but there you go, the great SOLDIER First Class, hero of the war with Wutai, creates wood carvings in his spare time and I, the great hero Zack, fix jackets."

Clapping her hands Aerith accepted the jacket back, slipping it on and admiring his good work, "It's like new again!"

"Only the best from me, Angeal would expect nothing less," Zack agreed. "Now, don't we have some flowers to be selling?"

"Yes, and then you can add gardener to your resume too."

"Zack Fair, SOLIDER, tailor and gardener, you know what? I think I like that."


End file.
